TWENTY-THREE
The road to Peppermint Bay follows the coast. Out in the distance, across the channel, you can see Bruny Island, where they farm the best oysters I’ve ever tasted. The coastal views range from extraordinary to unbelievable, and they change every time you crest a rise or turn a corner on the winding road.
The sun was low in the sky, and to our right tall stands of trees cast long shadows across the rocky outcrops and sandy bays. For a minute I allowed myself to imagine being here under different circumstances, heading for dinner with an old friend before setting out on a trek down the Franklin, maybe to photograph the ancient Huon pines.
Ed’s place was a few clicks past Peppermint Bay, a two-storey weatherboard set on pilings on the water side of the road. There was a long jetty sticking out into the channel with an elegant cabin cruiser moored at the end. Elegant or not, it was still smaller than an aircraft carrier, which put it into my category of modes of transport best avoided whenever possible. But if I was going to find out what was happening on Adamek Island, I really didn’t have a choice.
Dinner Chez Ed was my take on a bouillabaisse, which was really a fish stew since we were a long way from Marseille, and anyway, my mate Armando would be happy to tell you the French ripped off bouillabaisse from the Italian zuppa di pesche. Ed’s state-of-the-art kitchen had every pot, pan and gadget a man could ask for, and even if I wasn’t dragging on a Gauloises or sucking down some Pastis 51 while I cooked, the local seafood and the saffron-infused tomato, garlic and anise-flavoured fish soup all came together with a nice gutsy, Mediterranean feel. I found a Jansz rosé in Ed’s wine cellar to help wash it down.
We had dinner out on the deck overlooking the water, and afterwards we reminisced about Harry over a half-bottle of an excellent vintage port. When the subject of Harry’s affair with Julie came up, Ed said that Harry reckoned she was just filling in time, and she was carrying a torch for someone else. Not that he’d complained – Harry had been going through yet another relationship break-up and he appreciated having such a soft shoulder to cry on. None of us Dedheads could lay claim to a decent long-term relationship.
I turned in around eleven. I hadn’t had much sleep over the previous two nights and I needed to have my wits about me the next day. Ed’s guest bedroom was huge, with a king-sized bed and a balcony overlooking the channel. It must have been the fresh air and the wine and the gentle lapping of water, because I went out like a light, right in the middle of musing about Julie and her torch-carrying.
Sunday morning we were up at sparrow’s fart, and while Ed rechecked the weather forecast I made coffee and raided his fridge for breakfast fixings. I figured Ed deserved a decent breakfast, as well as dinner, for his trouble.
It was a crisp, clear morning and we ate out on the deck again: wholewheat toast triangles topped with slices of avocado, crispy rashers of bacon, poached eggs, Thai sweet chilli sauce, and a sprig of coriander.
After breakfast we walked down the jetty to the forty-foot Riviera Flybridge Cruiser tied up at the end. The name painted on the stern and the life preservers was Suzie-QC. Ed had named the boat after Susan Winter, the barrister who’d won him another impressive settlement a few years back, in one of those legal actions he enjoyed so much. The twin Cummins B370 diesels had a very reassuring rumble to them as we pushed off from the dock just after nine, heading south and towing a Zodiac inflatable with an outboard motor.
The sky was clear, the sea as smooth as glass, and all the signs pointed to me being able to keep my breakfast to myself. My last boat trip in ocean waters had been from Bali to Broome on a yacht that was attacked by a speedboat full of heavily armed pirates. We barely escaped with our lives, and now even a trip across the harbour on the Manly ferry tended to make me a bit edgy.
Up in the wheelhouse, I pulled the MP7 from its holster and checked it out. With a folding front grip and a retractable rear stock, the MP7 is not a whole lot bigger than a hefty combat pistol.
‘Is that thing bloody plastic?’ Ed laughed. ‘It looks like a toy.’
‘They use a lot of polymer,’ I said, ‘so I guess it’s sort of plastic, but it’s no toy.’ I pushed a magazine into the base of the grip. ‘Heckler and Koch PDW personal defence weapon, 950 high-velocity rounds a minute on full auto. Forty-round magazine, and the bullets will punch through serious body armour at up to a couple of hundred metres.’
‘Oh,’ Ed said. ‘That’s a lot of personal defence.’
‘Works for me.’
Around eleven, as I was brewing coffee in the galley, Ed called me up on deck. He had a pair of binoculars focused on something off the starboard bow.
‘Take a butcher’s at that,’ he said. ‘Looks like old Artemesia’s sent out a welcoming committee.’ He handed me the binoculars. ‘Thar she blows.’
It took a moment to find them, and then I saw the plume of white spray, and then another and another, and then suddenly a huge flat grey tail broke the water.
‘Humpbacks,’ Ed said. ‘Megaptera novaeangliae. Heading back south to feed after having their babies up in warmer water. Let’s see if we can get any closer.’
Fifteen minutes later, he had brought the boat near the edge of the pod. He shut down the engines and let us drift. There were a dozen whales in the group, including a couple of young calves, who stuck close to their mothers, but none of them seemed too fussed by our presence.
We stood out on the bow and I wondered if I should shoot some pictures, but decided against it. Having your eye up to a viewfinder means you get pictures of an event but sometimes no actual experience of it. And this was something that was worth experiencing.
I felt an almost imperceptible lifting motion on the boat, and down through the deep blue water I saw the shape of a huge whale slowly rising up towards us. He stopped just a few feet under the surface, rolled slightly, and then I was looking into a great big inky eye. We studied each other for what seemed like hours but was probably only seconds, and then the giant bulk of the whale faded back into the blue-grey depths.
It was an amazing feeling, looking into that eye. I had a sense that there was a soul inside that great body, and the whale was checking me out to see what I was doing in his backyard. Seconds later, the boat rocked violently as the whale leapt up out of the water not ten metres off our bow, twisting in the air like a twenty-tonne ballerina before splashing back down into the waves. I had to get a good grip on the deck rail to stop going over the side.
‘Showing off,’ Ed yelled. ‘Maybe she fancies you.’
We were completely surrounded by whales now, showered with spray from their blowholes. The air was filled with the sound of their exhaling breath, and their massive tails slapping down on the water. It was breathtaking, and yet at the same time somehow intensely peaceful. Any one of these huge creatures could smash the little Suzie-QC to pieces with a flick of the tail, but they seemed perfectly content to have us floating along with them on the gentle swell.
Several whales were lifting their heads up out of the water then arching their bodies before plunging back into the foaming sea. ‘That bending motion when they dive is why they call ’em humpbacks,’ Ed called out.
We drifted along for about fifteen minutes, with the pod slowly drawing away from us as they headed south. When they disappeared over the horizon Ed restarted the engines, and about an hour later he pointed to a grey bump in the distance.
‘Adamek Island. You can see why the whalers chose it. The whales came to them. All they had to do was row out and harpoon the poor buggers while they were cruising past.’
Ed explained that the Tasmanian whaling industry had boomed for forty years in the 1800s, until the development of kerosene wiped out the market for whale oil as a lamp fuel. Adamek Island, being isolated and difficult to access in bad weather, was one of the first stations to close down. A lighthouse had been built in 1869 and the keepers and their families had been the only human inhabitants of the windswept rocky outcrop for the next hundred years.
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The lighthouse was the first structure we saw as we motored towards the island. It seemed to be flashing as we got closer, even though it was a bright sunny day. Ed focused his binoculars and grunted.
‘They’ve got radar mounted on top of the lighthouse. They already know we’re here, mate. Take a look.’
The rotating radar dish was clearly visible through the binoculars. One edge of the metal dish was catching the sun on each rotation, hence the flashing.
Ed took the boat round the southern end of the island, keeping about a kilometre offshore. The entrance to the main harbour faced south and was just a narrow gap in the rock face. Barely 250 metres wide, even on a calm day it looked menacing.
‘Christ,’ Ed said, throttling the engines back slightly, ‘I wouldn’t fancy going in or out of that with even a mild swell running. Imagine doing it under sail, or in a whaleboat using oars. Get a decent sea up, and some wind, and you’d have better odds playing Russian roulette.’
He put the engines back to full revs and we skirted the bottom of the island and headed north. The drop-off and pick-up point was the small inlet Lucas had pointed out, and Ed figured that if we kept well in to the shore we’d be under the radar for the drop-off. Then the plan was he’d take the Suzie-QC back towards Hobart, as if he’d just done a leisurely cruise around the island, and heave to over the horizon to wait for my signal.
Once I had the information I needed and was ready to leave, I’d activate a homing device and disable the radar dish, so Ed could cruise back in and pick me up undetected. It seemed a simple enough plan – but I think that may have been what Custer said before he rode into the Little Big Horn.
I changed into black jeans, a black hoodie and my hiking boots. On the rear deck of the Suzie-QC was a spray jacket, a two-way radio, a flare pistol and a lifejacket. I gave Ed the receiver linked to the homing device under my belt buckle, and he gave me a quick refresher on handling the inflatable. He was reluctant to leave me, but I promised to keep out of trouble and to have the Zodiac back in the garage by midnight with a full tank of petrol and no scratches on it.
I’m not sure he was convinced, and frankly neither was I. Who knew what the hell I was going to run into on that lump of rock, apart from Artemesia Gaarg, Pergo, the choirboys, and a couple of nukes. The MP7 was wrapped up tight in plastic inside its holster and as I strapped it on I hoped I’d brought enough ammo.
TWENTY-FOUR
I half jumped, half fell into the Zodiac from the stern of the Suzie-QC and Ed started laughing. I hate rubber boats. He was still laughing when I pushed away from the cabin cruiser, twisted the throttle on the outboard and turned in towards the island. Bastard.
The waves were small and even though they’d had no effect on the Suzie-QC, they caused quite a bit of buffeting on the little inflatable as I headed towards the narrow opening in the rock face. The inlet was a miniature version of Adamek Island’s main harbour, with the same towering stone walls and foaming white water where the ocean swirled in and out. It was ten percent seamanship and ninety percent blind luck that got me through the twenty-metre gap in the cliff face and onto the tiny pebble beach in one piece.
After making the Zodiac secure, I took off my lifejacket, wrapped the flare pistol in the spray jacket and stowed them in the bottom of the boat. I checked and loaded the MP7, then started on the climb up the cliff. I had thermals on under my black jeans and hoodie and I was sweating by the time I reached the top.
The lighthouse appeared to be three or four k’s off and I headed that way. The island was almost devoid of trees, apart from occasional clumps of withered shrubs with spindly roots wrapped around the weathered rocks. They looked like they were hanging on for grim death in anticipation of the next big blow from the freezing south.
I’d been walking for about five minutes when I heard the chopper. The island didn’t offer a lot of hiding places so I sprinted towards a clump of shrubs, hoping my black clothes would camouflage me in the broken shadows of the bushes. The helicopter, heading north, passed over me without stopping. I breathed a sigh of relief and then stopped mid-exhalation when I noticed the unblinking eye of the fat black tiger snake at my elbow.
I was wondering whether I could jump faster than a snake could strike, which I wouldn’t want to put money on, and whether my thermals would deflect fangs, also a long shot, when the snake opened its mouth and then disintegrated into a writhing mass of white flesh and entrails. The noise of the pistol shot bounced off the boulders and then there was silence.
‘I hate those fuckers,’ the man with the gun said, and spat. I moved my left hand very slowly up to my face and wiped snake guts off my cheek.
‘And if you so much as twitch another muscle, you prick, you’ll get the same.’
There were two of them, wearing camouflage combat gear, Raybans and bandanas. They looked like a couple of escapees from Survivor, but the pistols made me take them a little more seriously. And the fact that the bloke who’d shot the snake was Chief Petty Officer O’Reilly.
I got up with my hands in the air and O’Reilly kept me covered while the other bloke unhitched my MP7 and frisked me. He wasn’t very good at it. I once had an English bobby doing security at Heathrow give me what appeared to be a casual pat-down, but when he’d finished I reckon he knew exactly how much change I had in my pockets and how many fillings I had.
This bloke did find my two-way radio, which was no coup given it was the size of a packet of cigarettes. He smashed it on the rocks and handed the MP7 to O’Reilly.
‘Nice gun,’ O’Reilly said. ‘You take him in,’ he told the other bloke, gesturing towards the main harbour, ‘and if he gives you any grief waste him.’
We’d been walking for a couple of minutes when I heard a long burst of submachine gun fire coming from the direction of the inlet. The all-steel, spitzer-pointed ammo in the MP7 is designed to penetrate body armour, so the rubber Zodiac didn’t stand a chance. It was a good thing I was in training for the Bondi to Bronte ocean swim, because that was the only way I had now of getting out to the Suzie-QC for the pick-up.
I hadn’t expected to see a township, but Adamek Island’s harbour was surrounded by ten or twelve substantial stone buildings, which must have been built in the whaling days. They looked like they were in good condition, with new roofs, windows and doors, and fresh white mortar joining the stones and blocking out the weather. There were also another dozen modern, prefabricated buildings, which looked to be a mixture of housing and workshops.
Solar panels lined most of the roofs, and on a hilltop in the distance I could see the slowly turning blades of a row of wind turbines. Two helicopters were parked on concrete pads near a large aircraft hangar. One was a nifty little Bell 430, which still had its rotor blades turning, and the other was a huge Russian Mi-26 Halo heavy-lifter. With its twin turbo-shaft engines powering an eight-blade rotor, the Halo could lift up to twenty tonnes of cargo, which would make resupplying Artemesia’s little enterprise a walk in the park.
The village was set in a depression, which sheltered it from the worst of the wind, and there were orchards full of healthy-looking fruit trees and acres of thriving, neatly laid-out vegetable gardens. The whole scene would have been quite idyllic if it weren’t for the man with the gun walking behind me.
The harbour widened substantially once you were through the narrow opening, and there was a jetty with a single-masted, wooden-hulled sailboat, about ten metres in length, tied up to it. The lacquered planking on the hull was a rich golden-brown and it looked like an old whaleboat that had been lovingly restored.
To the left of the jetty was a cobbled slipway leading down to the water, and the remains of rusty railway tracks. Shiny new tracks ran out from the doors of a large workshop set back from the slipway, but rather than running down to the water to receive whales, these tracks arched upwards on a support structure of steel girders, ending abruptly after about fifty metres. I’d seen a construction like it before, but I couldn’t remember wh
ere.
As we walked past the workshop, a man in blue overalls stepped out of a side door. Behind him I could see flickering cold white light and hear the crackling of arc welding and the screech of an angle grinder cutting into metal. Sunday definitely wasn’t a day of rest on Adamek Island.
I was led into what looked to be a staff dining room in the main stone building. There were about a dozen or so large communal tables and a self-service hot food bar. I took a squiz at what was on offer and instantly regretted the decision. A self-service vegetarian cafeteria. That was two vegetarian joints in two days. What a nightmare. It was lucky the goons had taken the MP7 off me or I might have been tempted to blow my brains out.
Artemesia Gaarg was waiting for me at a private table tucked away in an alcove and set with a crisp white linen tablecloth. A waiter pushed in my chair for me, deftly placed a napkin on my lap, handed me a menu and suggested I might like to start with an aperitif. I opted for a tomato juice – a Goodie, of course.
After delivering me to Artemesia, my escort had positioned himself next to the main door, and it was pretty obvious that was where he was going to stay. Artemesia hadn’t spoken since I was ushered into her presence. Perhaps she had a copy of The Boy’s Own Book of Office Power Plays too. A second waiter appeared, so I glanced over towards my hostess and said, ‘After you, please.’
She smiled and ordered garlic and potato soup and frittata. I ordered the soup and the stew and let the waiter choose the wine, since I had no idea what the hell would go with eggplant and black-eyed peas.
‘Interesting menu,’ I said, by way of a conversation starter.
‘If we were in a primary-school dining room in Japan, Mr Murdoch, the menu would offer whale meat.’
‘I had a close encounter with some whales on my way out here, Miss Gaarg,’ I said, ‘and I have to tell you that even a small one would make a hell of a sushi platter – I’m not sure the kids would be able to get through it in a single sitting.’
Sensitive New Age Spy Page 17
